After a tumultuous run of Battlefield games, Electronic Arts is making a much bigger investment in the shooter franchise, rallying four studios — Ripple Effect, Criterion, Motive, and DICE — to develop the follow-up to Battlefield 2042. In a move reminiscent of EA’s development of the next Skate game, the publisher and its collective Battlefield Studios are also opening up early, “pre-alpha” testing of the next-generation Battlefield game to ensure that player feedback is guiding its creation.
On Monday, EA announced Battlefield Labs, a new player-testing program through which Battlefield fans will “test specific focus areas in the game,” said Battlefield producer Christian Grass, including combat and destruction mechanics, multiplayer maps, and game modes. The plan, producers and executives said, is to prototype features, play-test them, and get feedback from new and longtime Battlefield players.
“We have to find gameplay that really resonates with the players and then build on that,” said Byron Beede, general manager of the Battlefield franchise, in a video announcing Battlefield Labs. Through Battlefield Labs, developers hope to “try different things, but also validate what players are expecting from Battlefield,” said David Sirland, a producer at original Battlefield developer DICE.
Interested players can sign up for a shot to play-test the new Battlefield game at EA’s website and join the franchise’s official Discord. EA said that initial invites will be limited to “a few thousand participants with servers located in Europe and North America,” but that the company plans to roll out Battlefield Labs testing to “tens of thousands more” in other regions.
EA and Battlefield Studios showed brief snippets of the next Battlefield game in action, prefacing them with a note that the footage was “pre-alpha gameplay.” But it had the hallmarks of Battlefield gameplay, showcasing modern-day military action that blended on-the-ground infantry gunplay with a variety of combat vehicles and massive level destruction.
The most recent entry in the franchise, Battlefield 2042, was released in 2021 to a mixed reception. The futuristic military shooter emphasized large player counts (up to 128 players at once), gameplay-changing weather effects, and a community-focused mashup mode called Battlefield Portal that let players mix and match elements of past games.
Electronic Arts has not announced a release date or platforms for the next Battlefield game. But if the approach here is anything like the one that EA took with Skate. (aka Skate 4), we may be waiting quite a while to get our hands on it.
